Weapon of Choice
by C W St.J Nobbs
Summary: Before they get ya chain smokin'...no, wait. This is the story about the one time that Gendo Ikari died, took the location of Adam with him  literally  and the coverup that Seele constructs to buy themselves time to find it. Rated M for good reason.


As is the case with so many things, it is only appropriate that this begins at the end.

His breathing became heavier as he sank back into the pilot seat. The view port looking out on Tokyo-3 suddenly snapped to an odd shade of monochrome. He was moving again. A shape below him caught his eye. There was a sinking feeling where there had been a stomach a few moments before. Chills ran down the area of space his spine had previously occupied. Had he continued having skin, it would have crawled.

WELL THAT'S IT THEN said a voice that sounded like someone was banging funeral bells inside of coal mines.

He turned and saw a man-shaped thing wearing a black cloak. A pale blue glow spilled out from eye sockets and through teeth, and it became clear he was looking at a skeleton under the cloak. It had a scythe.

IT IS TIME TO GO

"So I'm dead?"

ESSENTIALLY

"Well, I guess it's not like I didn't see it coming. I was honestly hoping to have another sixty or seventy years,"

MOST DO

"I supposed I died doing something important?" it came out as a question, but he was hoping for validation from the figure.

ALL WHO DIE SERVE AN IMPORTANT CAUSE.

Not the validation he had hoped for.

YOU'D BE SURPRISED HOW QUICKLY THIS PLACE WOULD FILL UP OTHERWISE.

They went with the low roar of thunder that only seems capable of happening in a graveyard at night.

But that was now, and this was then…

James found the life of an Evangelion pilot to be boring, and often spent synch tests sitting in the cold LCL, wondering why anyone would chose to do this, let alone give up their lives for it. As far as he was concerned, being an Eva pilot consisted of sitting in cold liquid that tasted like blood for eight hours a stretch once a week, being yelled at by other people to focus. Not exactly thrilling. He had a designated Evangelion unit, but so far it had only served as a pretty little money drain for NERV.

Recon Evangelions, as they had been termed by his father's team, were the wave of the future. Apparently giant, fighting robots piloted by teenagers against alien beings known as Angels seeking to bring about global cataclysm for the third time wasn't futuristic enough for them. They were smaller, so had trouble operating some of the larger weapons made for Evangelions, but could function in combat for up to twenty five minutes without an external power source which was a big deal for some reason. They barely had any armor either, but were fast enough to avoid any significant damage. This was, of course, theoretical. The extent of the Recon Evangelion's field testing was literally driving it out to a field and having a pilot attempting to synch with it. The pilot was promptly killed. As an interesting side note, the ill fortuned pilot happened to have been James' father.

Which, for reasons James attempted to not think about too much, made him the perfect person to shove into the very same death dealing machine 14 years later.

But he didn't die, which at the time he considered a blessing, but now it was starting to seem like a curse. Somehow, NERV had found a way to make being an Evangelion pilot even more boring than it already was. That way was to shove James into the back of a cargo plane, load his Evangelion up and ship him off to Japan. The twenty hour journey gave him plenty of time to think. Most of the thoughts were 'Jesus, I wish I was somewhere else'. James considered walking around in the cargo bay, but many of the instruments looked expensive and as much as he wished he wasn't there, he didn't consider death to be an alternative. Directly in front of him, covered in a brown tarp was his Evangelion. He felt like the Evangelion was silently watching him.

He must have been on that plane for too damn long.

Meanwhile, halfway across the world an eerily similar scene was playing out. Primary differences being that instead of being Irish, this pilot hailed from China. Instead of being the pilot of a Recon class Evangelion, his gigantic plaything of mass destruction was a Combat class Evangelion. Being built for combat it was built quite a bit sturdier than most Production type Evangelions, but some criticized it for being too slow for effective combat. Something that people tended to forget was that sharks were slow right until they saw something they wanted. He didn't exactly dislike piloting his Evangelion, but he found it to be pretty boring as well. He found himself often wondering what the point of investing billions of dollars on researching new technology for Evangelions if nobody was ever going to actually use the damn things to fight.

He did not know that there were people who were aware that Tokyo-3 was once again about to be taken to pieces by very large creatures that most people would mistake for Angels. And that was the entire point. As any good shadow organization is well aware of they might be immune to the protests that were brought up when it is revealed that billions were being funneled away from the public funds to create more powerful and more varied weapons of mass destruction, but the front they put up to the public could take damage, and that was unacceptable. The loss of Gendo Ikari the year before was a combination of a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, someone who was a constant thorn in the sides of their plans was removed. But it seemed that he had taken the location of Adam with him to the grave. They needed to buy time to search for Adam.

Instrumentality needed to continue.


End file.
